The Lofties (The Echelon Book 2) by Ramona Finn (no david read aloud .txt) 📕

icon, a little cartoon projector. The picture flashed back to the map, red dots bristling around its perimeter. “Look. She’s mapped out their projectors, their walls, their... what are these?”

“Power plants, I think.” Lock tapped the map again. “See how they’re all built on lakes? That’s for cooling. Then, all those lights clustered round them, that’s the districts they’re serving.”

I slumped against the wall, fighting vertigo. Lock’s voice was cutting in and out, rising and falling with the thrumming in my head. I bit my lip hard and licked blood. “Why would Lazrad need—”

“She’s mapping them out,” said Lock. “Strengths and weaknesses, resources, population. Those cameras, they were hidden. She must’ve sent spies, infiltrated—”

I rubbed at my temples. That static was rising, crackling in my ears. I felt its pull in my marrow, urging me west. Lock trotted after me as I turned toward its source. I could hear him, voice rising, but his words were just noise. A distraction.

I made my way down a long hall, darker than the rest. The oil stink grew stronger, like drowning in tar. I breathed through my mouth and tasted it instead. My organs were throbbing now, my blood singing in my ears. Something was waiting for me, something cold and immense—something irresistible, and I stumbled toward it.

“Myla.” Lock grabbed for me. I evaded his grasp and broke into a sprint. The static rose to a shriek, molten lead down my spine. I crashed through some obstacle and either time stood still or I did, my body numb with shock.

“Ho-ly...” Lock drifted past me, eyes round as saucers. I hardly noticed him. Through the roar in my head, I saw. I understood. I did a slow turn and took in racks of blasters stacked two floors high. Cannons squatted below them, barrels gaping black. I saw huge tanks of coolant, plasma canisters on wheels. Lock reached for some monstrosity, some double-barreled propellered thing, and jerked back as though stung.

“Drones. Why so many? What’s she gonna—she could wipe out all the rebels, and still have—”

“They’re not for the Outsiders.” I pressed my palm to a cannon and felt my body resonate with it. I felt steadier touching it, the static resolving—not into music, but a deep sense of calm. I jerked my hand back, disquieted. Lock touched my arm.

“Who, then? Who are they for?”

I closed my eyes, feeling sick. “Those cities. Those people. She wants it all for herself.”

Lock cursed, turned away. “I thought the nanobots would be here. I thought for sure they’d be here.”

“They are. They have to be. This place is huge.” I spotted another corridor, sloping deeper underground. It forked in two at the end, running north and south. “I’ll go that way,” I said, pointing north. “You go down.”

Lock nodded tightly, and we split up. I passed a room full of books and a nook with a bed in it. An unmarked door caught my eye, locked but flimsy. I wrenched it open and found gretha tanks, rack upon rack of them, stacked along the walls. An odd contraption stood beyond them, a cross between a chair and a bed. It had two padded arms, flung out to the sides, with straps on each one, as though to hold someone in. A metal apparatus stood above it, hung with odd screens and instruments. I started toward it, dry-mouthed. I felt sick again, like with the mutants, flooded with a creeping sense of wrong. Something was here, something unnatural—

“Myla! Run!”

I did a thousand-volt jerk, hair standing on end.

“Lock?”

I sprinted back the way I’d come and down the south corridor. Doors flashed past, empty rooms, a study, a morgue. Up ahead, I heard nothing, just ominous silence. I shouted for Lock, and he bellowed back to me, “No! No! Go back!” I hurtled on anyway, through a set of swinging doors, and my foot squeaked on the tile as I skidded to a halt.

“Elli? What—?”

She pressed her blaster to Lock’s head. Her finger tightened on the trigger, and my guts turned to water.

“Don’t.”

“Why not?” Heels clicked behind me, and I whirled, hardly breathing. Lady Lazrad stood expressionless, stiff-backed in the doorway. “You don’t belong here,” she said.

I felt my mouth gaping open. I shut it. Licked my lips. She was real this time, solid. Flesh and blood. I could take her, maybe, but if I tried—

“I knew you couldn’t be trusted. One look and I knew it, before Prium said a word.”

I blinked. “Before—?”

“Your interrogations. I could see you’d turned. Both of you.” She plucked at her collar, at a heavy diamond brooch. “I thought I’d still find some use for you, but it seems—”

“No.” I lurched toward Lock, and froze as Elli tensed. “Not him. He’s still loyal. I dragged him down here. I made him stand guard. He never—”

“If that’s true, it’s a shame.” Elli stroked Lock’s arm, and I saw him grimace. “If you’d just gone along, kept yourselves out of trouble, you’d have had another ten months. You could have played all you wanted, then gone in your sleep. Just like Jack, just like Sonia.” Her eyes locked with mine. “Like your sister, soon enough.”

I lunged for her. Lock drove his elbow into her belly, and she jackknifed in two. Her blaster went off, a bright burst of plasma. Pain bloomed in my shoulder, then needles at my wrist, sharp, biting—Lazrad’s nails. I wrenched free and bulled into her, relishing her shout of surprise. She hadn’t bargained for my strength. I saw the moment she felt it, caught that spark of recognition.

“Nanobots.”

Lazrad drew back. Lock grabbed me by the hand.

“Run,” he said, and we did, helter-skelter for the elevator.

Chapter Twenty

We tore full-speed through the armory, sweat down our backs, and in our ears, the hiss of blaster fire. I could smell my own blood and charring flesh, and I pushed myself harder, half-flying across the room. Lock fell behind, and I turned to scream at him. He tore a rack of blasters from the wall and